Personalization Without People? How To Strike The Right Balance [Infographic]

You want to give your prospects and customers a seamless, personalized, and sublime experience, and you know that you can’t do that without collecting their personal data. The trouble is, a lot of your customers don’t like the idea of sharing their information with you – what exactly are they so afraid of?

Findings by Boxever have shown that attitudes toward personalization and privacy are complex, and there are a few reasons why many of them are so against sharing their personal information with companies. This infographic illustrates the trickiness of balancing privacy concerns and effective personalization. Marketers should tread carefully when it comes to putting automation in place.

While there are many purchase decisions where customers feel more comfortable dealing with a salesperson face-to-face, other purchases seem to do very well without any human interaction. When it comes to making purchases involving zero human interaction, only 20% of people would consider buying a car but 72% of people would consider booking a hotel and 73% of people would consider booking a flight. Nowadays, this doesn’t necessarily have to mean booking through a company website – in fact, 40% of people have said that they are comfortable booking travel through chat programs such as Facebook Messenger. I realize these are examples from B2C industries but as I’ve discussed previously our perspective should be “human to human” or “brain to brain”.

While personalization can be a good way to improve customer experience, it can also have its problems – privacy concerns being a major one. Customers are also wary about receiving spam mail or offers that aren’t relevant to their interests. Many customers are skeptical about the benefits of data collection through the Internet of Things:

Only 14% of people say data collection through connected devices will improve their life

The other 86% either aren’t sure or don’t think it will improve their life

The people who believe that this kind of data collection can improve their lives named the following positive impacts:

63% listed better recommendations from brands

56% listed the ability to make personal choices based on data

55% listed enhanced awareness of their habits

34% listed increased health

32% listed more financial stability

Of the customers who are nervous or negative about collection of their data, privacy is a major factor:

83% said that data collection would be an invasion of privacy

68% feared that brands would misuse their data

Millennials tend to be less worried about these factors than older demographics.

As we look to boost their automation and personalization, marketers need to be aware of customer perceptions of personalization and their privacy concerns. What have you done to build trust with its customers around data collection? Let me know in the comments!

Louis Foong is the founder and CEO of The ALEA Group Inc., one of North America’s most innovative B2B demand generation specialists. With more than three decades of experience in the field, Louis is a thought leader on trends, best practices and issues concerning marketing and lead generation. He is member of the B2B Council of the Canadian Marketing Association (“CMA”) and a regular contributor to the (CMA) blog. His work has appeared in Yahoo News, SmartBrief, CMO.com, USA Today, CustomerThink, Business2Community and on the list of “must reads” by McKinsey on Marketing and Sales.